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Sun, 02/09/2014 - 03:14 — rpgrev

ADMINISTRIVIA

RPG Review is a quarterly online magazine which will be available in print version at some stage. All material remains copyright to the authors except for the reprinting as noted in the first sentence. Various trademarks and images have been used in this magazine of review and criticism. This includes Dungeons & Dragons, by Wizards of the Coast, Tunnels & Trolls by Flying Buffalo, Legend/RuneQuest2 by Mongoose Publishing, Traveller5 by Mark Miller, Chivalry & Sorcery originally by Fantasy Games Unlimited. Dracula 3000 is distributed by Lions Gate, and Thor : The Dark World by Disney. Artwork includes The Fomorians, as depicted by John Duncan (1912), Cover image is of a Indonesian coelecanth, from the Smithsonian Institute. Any use of images, material etc, is not to be construed as a challenge to any intellectual property and is under "fair use" as review. Any use of images, material etc, is not to be construed as a challenge to any intellectual property and is used under "fair use". Text is in Nimbus Roman, headings in Nimbus Sans, front page in Utopia. Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

LETTERS

I was wondering how I could submit content, if this is an open source kind of thing, what the deal is? I am a huge fan of tabletop/p&p/PC rpgs, and have DMed multiple systems for the last 20 years. I would love to write something for this. Also, how do I subscribe? :)

Brian Babineau

(We often get letters like this, so the following is part of our response to Brian)

Subscriptions and article information is available at the following URL

You really should put RPG review up on Drive thru rpg. I'm sure that the majority of issues would be by free download but a few nuts like me would
actually purchase a print on demand issue of the zine.

Thomas Verreault

That's a really good idea. I think I might do that.

(Starting from the next issue!)

EDITORIAL

Welcome to the (quite late) 22nd edition of RPG Review. This issue covers the idea of survivors and, rather like early White Dwarf magazines (that is, around issues 1 to 50, remember them?) it has a particular concentration on D&D, Traveller, and RuneQuest, with a couple of extras – in our case Tunnels & Trolls and Chivalry & Sorcery. This issue is quite openly “retrospective”, looking at those games that have been with us since the very early days of the hobby – although not all of them, of course. Nor are the articles only orientated towards those game systems as they were writ at the time; Karl Brown's articles include updating Tunnels & Trolls character generation, and the people of Legend/RuneQuest2 is clearly designed for more contemporary versions of that classic game.

An interest is initially raised on what constitutes a “first generation” game and why have some survived – and so many failed. Yours truly does a modest investigation of various metrics which are often cited as the reason that certain games have succeeded and failed, some of which may surprise – and which should generate further discussion on the same.

There is also a number of articles which are quite generic. Moieties of the Pig Island Orcs, Spell-Casting As A Skill, Making Magic More Interesting, and Simulation-Narrative View of the Dungeon and are quite clearly orientated with games like Dungeons & Dragons in mind, but at the same time can be adapted to a wider-range of game systems. On a more system independent and theoretical approach is Chris La Haise's insightful exploration of in-game actions and in-game consequences.

Something that is quite notable about this issue – and it is entirely by accident rather than design – is that it's particularly text heavy. It is just that a number of lengthy articles were received and – despite using a format that can be released with any page count desired - for the purposes of old-fashioned consistency RPG Review remains as a 64 page quarterly.

Finally, we have two movie reviews form highly divergent budgets; guest reviewer Zenicurean engages in a useful public service by giving warning of the straight-to-video release Dracula 3000 whilst regular Andrew Moshos looks at the latest Thor movie.

The next edition of RPG Review is entitled “Different Worlds” which, of course, was a classic gaming magazine from the early to mid 80s which ran for a magnificant forty seven issues, which was particularly notable for its many reviews. The next issue of RPG Review is taking more, however, from the title – an exploration of various game worlds with an emphasis on those which have received a little less “airplay” than what is normally expeccted.